Leaders of Change: Paul Whitacre
PAUL R. WHITACRE leads the Trilliant eCommerce and omnichannel business in the fast-growing online grocery space.
Prior to Trilliant, as a Senior Brand Manager at Kimberly-Clark, Paul led digital transformation and eCommerce growth for the Huggies and Pull-Ups brands from 2015-2018. He’s been in brand and eCommerce for over 15 years in Fortune 500, Private Equity, Angel Investment firms going back to his time launching an eCommerce startup in the early 2000s.
Paul’s mission in life is to build talent and develop leadership in those around him and he believes that people are the most valuable resource in any organization.
Why did you choose to pursue eCommerce in your career? I was just talking to my sons about this the other day. Back in high school in the 1990s, the mantra was “your job you will end up doing may not even be invented yet”. I shrugged that off (see Atlas), and thought it wasn’t anything but a pithy quote. Fast forward a few years to 2003, I was in the midst of a small eCommerce startup that I helped launch. Once I understood that building brands and businesses in eCommerce utilizes the same tools and skills as most other business, just at a much faster rate, I was hooked. The consumer is always at front the front and center and the feedback is immediate.
What is your biggest strength, and how have you used it for your success in eCommerce? I would hope others would agree but my personal belief is that building talent and relationships is the most critical skill one can develop. Helping others develop into future leaders, while never stopping learning, is the key to continued successful growth. I believe that building talent and connecting people through relationships is my biggest strength and is the main reason I have had success in eCommerce. Focusing on others and ‘doing well by doing good’ are central tenants to my daily toolkit for success.
What is the weirdest skill or talent to come in handy in your eCommerce experience? Honestly, I’d say my curiosity and consumer focus. While I’m relentless in my pursuit of information, I believe that being endlessly curious allow me to keep ahead of the pace of change and focus one the strategic needs of my consumers. In eCom, there are no specialists. There are generalists that are more like well-rounded athletes in all of the fundamental disciplines of business: finance, sales, marketing, operations, supply chain, customer service, etc. I question everything and if you listen to your consumers, they will teach you something new each day.
How have you most successfully influenced change within your organization (or with your clients)? I am, by nature, an agent of change. My personality style is very extroverted and inclusive, data driven, and relentlessly focused on making decisions. Being comfortable with change is necessary to building coalitions, to execute within large organizations, and to accomplish goals at the speed of the market.
What was your most “valuable” career failure, and why? My most valuable failure came during the downturn of the Great Recession. Having a newly minted business degree did nothing to help me find a job. It was a brutal job market and a large contingent of my generation still suffer the effects of that time on their lives. I had family, a mortgage and I couldn’t find a job. The hardship forced me to take a long look in the mirror, find out what my strengths and weaknesses were, and double down on them. In that case, I moved back into the eCommerce startup world and then into corporate, scaled eCommerce. The lessons I learned during that time that I’d call my ‘early life crisis’, I try to share as often as I can to help guide others who end up in similar career crossroads.
In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life? I’m not really an academic, but I can say going back to school to earn my executive MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management has transformed my life. It’s really put the final pieces in place in my experience that has rounded out my skill set as a general manager. The program is the world’s best, and while attending, has expanded my global network and understanding of commerce tremendously. I am a much better person and member to the business community, with credit mainly due to the curriculum and lifelong friends and colleagues I’ve met in the program.
What are you learning right now? I’ve been learning about valuation models in M&A. Given the pace of consolidation in the marketplace, I’m learning to value acquisitions and the outcomes that this has on consumers, industries and competition. While not a ‘finance’ expert, I believe that any General Manager should understand the fundamental elements that drive finance, including how to assess and set up a capital structure within an organization, what impacts shareholder value, and what levers impact capital investment decisions.
What are the 1-3 songs that would make up your career soundtrack today?
- Meant to Live + This is Your Life by Switchfoot: These songs remind me to always keep a focus on things larger than myself and that while our employment is great, there is more to life than just the work we do. It also reminds me of where I came from and to always be looking out to provide others with a hand up.
- Good Life by OneRepublic: It always reminds me where I’ve come from and what a grace it is to do what I do in the business world that we operate. The good life is easy come easy go so enjoy it.
- 100 Years by Five for Fighting: The counter to OneRepublic, we all need balance and perspective. Life is a marathon but if you don’t stop to enjoy the seasons, you can quickly miss it.
What are the 1-3 books you’ve gifted the most or that have greatly influenced your life, and why?
- The Bible: When I was younger and searching for wisdom from others who have come before me, I focused on reading historical texts. The wisdom I received from leaders like David and Solomon in books like Proverbs and Psalms transformed my life. The Bible, whether you consider yourself religious or not, is a transformational read and well worth your time.
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand: During the Great Recession, I spent a lot of time studying different philosophical world views to help make sense of the changes taking place in commerce globally. With the proliferation of information and infinite access to opinions on every economic theory, I was amazed to find that Atlas Shrugged, published first in 1957, provided an almost surreal prediction of what was happening here in the U.S. I certainly don’t ascribe to all of Ayn Rand’s philosophies, and the book is very wordy, but otherwise her view on economics foreshadowed the change in markets long before the Great Recession.
- Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy: The title says it all. In my experience, I’ve found that extremely smart people, with lots of great ideas, end up having difficulty carrying those ideas forward for a variety of reasons. Execution lays out how to bring things to life with both specific industry examples as well as frameworks. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to improve his or her ability to deliver on projects, KPIs, or ideas.
If you could have a gigantic billboard for the world to see with anything on it, what would it say, and why?
Try to make one better decision every day.
Just one better decision today is 365 better decisions a year and is over 10,000 better decisions over the next 30 years. You’ll stretch yourself every time and create exponential growth over your lifetime.
What are the worst recommendations or advice you have heard related to eCommerce? Every email I get from every new vendor or start-up promising to give me some glimpse into my business that I don’t yet know. If you know ecommerce, you know that the data and KPIs are all available. It’s about setting up a scalable wash, rinse, repeat business. It’s not about shiny objects and new tools.
What advice would you give to a future leader of change about to enter business, or specifically the eCommerce field? Understand all you can about traditional bricks and mortar retail and how to build brands. This overlays extremely well in eCommerce. As I stated earlier, eCommerce is just like every other business, but the pace and rate of change is exponentially faster.
What specific, industry-related change do you believe will happen that few others seem to see? In the next 5 years, pending any governmental intervention, I believe both Amazon and Walmart will be the largest retailers in both bricks and mortar and online commerce. The merger between the digital world and the real world has been underway for a while, but the last bastion for eCommerce is grocery. Only 3% of the $600 billion grocery market is sold online and growing rapidly, but not via pure plays. It will be the retail B&M giants that move the ball forward for consumers with the different forms of buying online and delivery to homes.
What is the last thing you bought online, and why? I rented the latest How to Train Your Dragon film to watch with my boys over the weekend. It still fascinates me that the next generation will never know what it means to have to wait for anything. Everything is on demand, all the time, with no delay in full, high definition resolution.
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Leaders of Change is a weekly interview series featuring select industry pioneers who are driving the evolution of commerce, the consumer and everything in between. If you would like to recommend a Leader of Change for consideration, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.